Answer to Question 1
Step 1: Analyze your expected listeners and their needs (the same as preparing for an informative presentation). Step 2: Write your exact purpose as a position statement. Step 3: Determine your initial credibility and plan to increase it if necessary. Step 4: Research your topic and choose the best method for presenting evidence to the audience, including a variety of supporting materials to clarify, add interest, and support arguments. Step 5: Select the best organizational pattern for organizing the persuasive speech. Step 6: Prepare an outline to polish verbal and visual supports, introduction, and conclusion. Step 7: Review your presentation to ensure it is ethical. Step 8: Practice your presentation to gain confidence.
Answer to Question 2
There are many definitions and approaches to persuasion. Three common definitions are useful: Persuasion is defined as communication intended to influence choice; a process with the goal of shaping, reinforcing, or changing the responses of behaviors of others; and as Rhetoric, persuasion is defined as the capability to discover in every given case the available means logos, pathos, and ethos of persuasion (Aristotle) Some common misconceptions about persuasion are that Persuasion is not simply offering information and letting the audience members make up their own minds (that is an informative presentation). Persuasion is arguing for a particular view after presenting possible options. Persuasion is not coercion. Persuasion is taking a stand and doing everything ethical within your power to convince others that your proposal is the better one.